I'm totally cool with Facebook mining my data if their open source keeps up this pace. GraphQL + Relay are total game changers for structuring web + mobile applications. Code bases get cleaner and more reliable. Less data gets sent over the wire. Other cool libraries are going to be built on top of Relay (I'm pretty excited to see what can be done now with ClojureScript components in .cljc files).

This is so awesome. Much love to everyone at Facebook that has made this possible. With React, React Native, Rebound, GraphQL, Relay etc... You're saving us all from drowning in complexity when buiding web/mobile apps and I love it. Keep fighting the good fight.

This is very exciting. Facebook's commitment to open source never ceases to impress me. They could keep this technology to themselves and have light years or we'd only read it in academic papers, like Google has done with its core technologies, and someone else would have to reverse engineer them. But Facebook gives the entire code base. No other large company I know of has such a strong commitment to open source.

I'm really excited about this! While working on an "isomorphic" app, data fetching gets incredibly complicated. There are many edge cases. For example, when rendering on the server, you have to block all renders until all data fetching is complete. But on the client, you can show the view with a "loading" indicator, as in not block. But you only need to fetch data for that route on the client if it hasn't been fetched on the server...the rabbit hole is full of wheels you don't want to reinvent.

I'm hoping Relay solves the data fetch problem in a way that makes isomorphic applications much cleaner.

I've skimmed the Relay and GraphQL repos, but I can't for the life of me figure out which database backends are supported. Can I put this in front of Postgres? Redis? How do I stand this up in front of an existing DB?

The major advantage of Relay/GraphQL seems to be if you have one monolithic data model for your entire codebase. You are in effect, binding your views directly to your backend. This is great if you are a company like Facebook with a single graph holding all data.

Sadly working as a consultant, using Relay as prescribed offers little use for me as I port from client to client with widely different data models. I am interested in maybe using Relay in parent React components to keep logical separation between my models and views.

Can someone explain to me how are they using all JS (node incl server-side rendering) stack in a company that is known for using PHP on the backend ?

Do they have a specific PHP-to-Node bridge on the server side? If they write isomorphic code, either they are writing apps completely separate from PHP or they have some kind of integration (Node-in-PHP?) running?

I would be grateful for hints, I'm looking into working more with FB tech but I can't do Node on the server right now. Knowing how their architecture looks like with PHP/Hack on the backend would really help.

It's actually still possible to perform a specific type of legal insider trading.

Example: you are an executive at E Corp and the company will announce its acquisition in two months. You had previously set up planned trades to sell x number of shares each month before then. Because the acquisition is at a premium on the current price, you will make much less money if you go forward with your trades before the announcement. So, what do you do? You cancel the trades.

Was this insider trading according to the SEC? Surprisingly, no! Even though you're profiting from insider information, the SEC rules are such that for insider trading to occur, you actually need a trade.

I think I will end up upvoting every share of this Bloomberg View columnist's columns here on Hacker News. The author, Matt Levine, thinks like a hacker in the best sense, by pushing ideas to their extremes and seeing what the consequences might be. He adopts a humorous tone, but his columns are full of food for thought.

The tone of this article was really, like, interrupted by a prolific use of "likes."

I wish it were so simple to hand-wave all security risks. Mr. Levine's ability to find a MySQL tutorial was quite impressive, but his dismissal of very real security concerns is childish. It's like saying cars are known to crash, so quit crashing cars. It's so, like, simple!

"We also hired patent lawyers and consultants familiar with this technology area. We created a new codec development process which would allow us to work through the long list of patents in this space, and continually evolve our codec to work around or avoid those patents. Our efforts are far from complete, but we felt it was time to open this up to the world."

This burden is becoming far too great, when this is the cost necessary to achieve innovation.

Actually, I'm still rooting for Daala (from Xiph.org, the same folks that did so well with Opus). It's still a long ways away from being finished, but their work is awesome and I've been following it for a while now!

Either way, having another effort competing to make a great format is not a problem. Here's hoping it goes well!

The MP4 patent situation needs another close look. MP4, which was first standardized in 1998, ought to come out of patent soon, if it hasn't already. There are a few remaining patents in the MPEG-LA package, but they're mostly for stuff you don't need on the Internet, such as interlaced video, font loading, error tolerance for broadcast, and VRML. This hasn't been looked at hard since 2011[1] and it's time for a new look. Some of the key patents related to motion compensation expired last April.[2]

It looks like the last patent on MP3 audio decoding expires next month.

<sarcasm mode>No wonder Big Media hates tech, they are trying to take all their money away.</sarcasm mode>

I think this is a great effort, and if you'll recall Google went and attempted to do the same thing with VP8, but found that people could file patents faster than they could release code[1]. I would certainly support a 'restraint of trade' argument, and a novelty argument which implies (although I know its impossible to currently litigate this way) that if someone else (skilled in the art) could come up with the same answer (invention) given the requirements, then the idea isn't really novel, it is simply "how someone skilled in the art would do it." I've watched as the courts stayed away from that theory, probably because it could easily be abused.

[1] Conspiracy theory or not, the MPEG-LA guys kept popping up additional patent threats once the VP8 code was released.

Why not throw the weight behind VP9? edit: I actually am curious, this isn't a question pointed at the validity of Thor. I just really want to see a great, open-source standard emerge and see people get behind it.

What I would like to see is a video codec that has a library implementation for reading and writing video in that format, that is cross-platform and relatively easy to build, like libjpeg or libpng does for images.I have tried to build VP9 on windows and it was a tedious and ultimately unfruitful process.

I don't really care about the compression ratios achieved, or speed of compression/decompression.

Something like motion JPEG would be good, if it was actually a proper standard (AFAICT it isn't).

There really needs to be a change to patent law around independent derivation of a concept. At very least we need to look into generalised thicket busting laws. The current situation is fundamentally unscalable.

There should be efforts outside of large corporations dedicated to building these standards. Because in general even when large corporations promise free / open-source licensing they really only mean non-commercial licensing or "open with caveats". So they pretty much own the commercial rights.

I want open-source to subsidize a small team of engineers to create a completely open standard where no single entity owns it and everyone is free to branch / fork it.

This is soooo awesome. I started rewriting SageMathCloud to use RethinkDB when I learned in May about your plans to support high availability. I've been rewriting everything, doing tests (building from sources, then using the beta you kindly provided), and finally after months of work, I'm ready to release the new version of SageMathCloud last night, but RethinkDB 2.1 isn't out yet. So I'm torn about whether to go with 2.1beta and cross my fingers, or just wait, or what. And this! Thank you so much. RethinkDB is, for my use, the first database I've ever actually really loved (and React.js+flux the first web framework). Here's my client code in case anybody is curious: https://github.com/sagemathinc/smc/blob/rethinkdb/salvus/ret...

I'll be around all day to answer questions about the release (along with a few other engineers on our team).

We're very excited about this release -- it makes the lives of RethinkDB users dramatically better because they won't have to wake up anymore in the middle of the night in case of most hardware failures :) It also took over a year to build and test, and has been one of the most challenging engineering problems we ever had to solve.

This looks awesome .. great job guys .. Just a question on licenses . Server is "GNU Affero General Public License v3.0" and drivers are "Apache License v2.0." , so in simple english does it means that can i use make commercial products with backend as RethinkDB? these things always confuses me so apologies if i ask something stupid here ..

Can I ask please why you don't provide ready to use, fine tunned amazon images? This is preventing me to use it now as I cannot find reliable configuration or information. Also the current image is out of date. Thanks

tl;dr: Xeno Kovah, Corey Kallenberg and I ported several previously disclosed vulnerabilities from Windows UEFI systems to Apple's EFI firmware. Using the 2014 Darth Venamis ("Dark Jedi") vulnerability we were able to unlock the motherboard boot flash, write our proof of concept to it, then scan the bus for PCIe Option ROMs and copy the worm to them as well. This allowed it to spread to other systems via shared Thunderbolt devices, possibly across air-gap security perimeters or via evil-maid attacks.

Like the original Thunderstrike vulnerability presented at CCC last year[0], firmware passwords and FileVault encryption don't prevent infection, reinstalling OSX won't remove it and it changes the RSA keys in the ROM so that Apple's firmware update routines can't remove it either. The only way to remove it is with a hardware in-system programming device connected to the SPI flash chip.

This is a transcript of our hour long presentation at DefCon 23 / Blackhat 2015 last week, which is why it is too long to read... Here is a shorter overview[1] and a demo video[2].

Off topic, but highly recommended: Trammell Hudson's other projects[0]. The most famous of which is Magic Lantern, an alternative firmware for Canon DSLRs which makes them infinitely more useful for movie making (and a little more useful for stills); but other projects are also worth looking at.

Apparently having a programmable operating system that allows reading/writing to RAM and system devices and that is rarely updated running under your own operating system allows easy exploitation, who would have guessed?

System integrators shouldn't be trusted to write software. If you've ever installed software from your various BIOS manufacturers you surely know that

If you are up to it and want to go from Watergate day 0 to the end, in a completely linear fashion and with excruciatingly detailed day by day coverage of events, get a copy of "Watergate: Chronology of a Crisis". It's an anthology of the daily reporting by Congressional Quarterly, which was a sort of daily newspaper about the goings on about Congress.

It is a fascinating read. Watergate is one of those things that you think you understand and then, after reading in depth about it, you realize how complex the whole thing was. From the amount of people involved to the campaign finance part to the lengths Nixon's administration went in trying to combat what they perceived as threats to the nation. It's something that is often forgotten, but many of the limits regarding campaign finance and executive power we have (had) today stem from the aftermath of Watergate.

An interesting outcome I experienced after reading the aforementioned anthology was the feel I got for Nixon as a person. I found myself almost admiring him. Say what you will about his methods, and they were dubious at best, the guy was dedicated to his principles.

Anyone who would argue that restrictions on government power aren't important, that surveillance isn't an issue, and you don't have to worry if you have nothing to hide should review the events described here.

Even if someone isn't abusing a particular right now, odds are very good that someone will come along who will. It's much better that the power doesn't exist in the first place.

As somebody who is interested in history, the Nixon administration has always fascinated me. The man was probably one of the most complex and dark people to become president. Because of Watergate, his administration is also probably the one that is most opened-up to the public (and to the historic record)

But before folks pile on to the guy (and he was widely hated), some things to keep in mind:

1) As far as taping conversations go, Nixon did nothing new. It's known that he simply carried on the tradition that LBJ, JFK, and Eisenhower before him did. Whatever happened to all of those tapes?

2) Before we go praising the Pentagon, I've read reports (I apologize for not being able to source them) that the Pentagon bugged civilian leadership. They almost certainly keep extensive dossiers on Congressional members and anybody in their civilian chain of command. Good luck getting eyes on any of that.

3) Nixon's problem was that he got caught doing something bad enough that crossed a political line. Lots of folks felt that he did nothing that others didn't do or try to do. Things like using the IRS for political hit jobs are perennials in DC. Using spies on reporters? Please. I can go back as far as Jefferson and show presidents using and attacking the press as they saw fit.

As the author points out, what concerns me a tremendous amount is the amount of information we don't know about all these other administrations -- up to and including our current one. With wholesale data collection underway against the American public, I would be astonished if 100 years from now it isn't widely known how many folks suffered invisibly from things far worse than Nixon ever did. The fall of Nixon was a harbinger of leaving an age of corrupt, small, overtly powerful presidents and entering an age of pervasive, huge, subtly powerful presidents. (Or rather, the system itself, which controls or is controlled by various presidents depending on their skills and staff capabilities)

If I'm still learning what Nixon did, 40 years later, what chance in hell do I have as a voter to make decisions about the value of any current or recent president? The office is so controlled by the political/governmental system and what we can know or not is so constrained, he might as well be anonymous.

When they released this a couple of months ago I was pretty excited to try it out. I think the barrier to installation is a bit high. First install Windows 10, then custom install of VS, install IoT Templates, then about 30 more steps before you get the image to flash on your SD. How about a link to the image I can blast on the SD and kick the tires without a couple hours of downloading and installing prerequisites?

I'm curious as to the mention of a "Web Control" and how long we have to wait until we can use DirectX for graphics, seeing as I've been trying to use Pis for digital signage[1] for a while with varying results (we've since started using cheap Android boxes with great results, but I wish I had more choices).

Sorry, silly question: can one use this Win10 R-pi as a "real computer"? (more to the point: I want to run labview programs on this r-pi, because of its small size/cost -- give/receive triggers various home automation equipment etc., I'm wondering if that'll be possible with this)

License? Seems hard to find online. Not looking for anything unusual for the existing raspi community, just what do I have to do to make a project on it then distribute a bootable sdcard image to users around the world for free. I'm guessing its a total non-starter but if I were surprised by it being BSD/GPL that would be interesting.

The hardware compatibility part of the release notes look like a bad linux install from 1995, which is pretty funny.

Is the Internet of Things now a Raspberry Pi 2?! A quad-core 900MHz CPU with a whopping 1GiB of RAM and a dedicated GPU?

So, for how long can you run a RPi 2 from a CR2032 cell or an AAA battery? A minute or two on full bore? Because that's the kind of energy budget people are generally talking about when they mean internet of things.

The RPi2 is a fully-featured media center, not a door lock or light switch or power sensor.

I guess the problem for Microsoft with the whole IoT thing is simply that they will never have Windows there, the devices you actually use for IoT measure their RAM in KiB. And, frankly, operating systems are very far down the on list of things we need to make IoT a reality.

Even more ideally you wouldn't need intrinsics. You'd just say what you want, with all constraits. E.g. I have two integers, this is their signedness, this is the range of expected inputs, this is the probability of the inputs, and this is what I want with them, nothing more... now you compiler figure it out.

Now the compiler too often generates suboptimal code because it has to take edge cases that it doesn't know don't matter here into account.

And then you have only those limited not actually well specified operators of C (something as simple as "+" is not fully specified on signed integers), so you can tell even less well what you actually want to the compiler... You can't even do a simple overflow check without bordering on undefined behaviour that allows compilers to do whatever they want.

If you could tell better what you want, the compiler could better choose the perfect CPU instructions for it.

So imho, a programmer shouldn't choose the CPU instruction as that doesn't allow portability, but the programmer should have the ability to specify things better than C now allows :)

One thing that has always interested me, how is backwards compatibility done for older CPU instruction set?

Like the new VFMADD* instructions. So if I wanted to write a binary which supports post-2013 CPUs as well as previous ones, my way of doing this would be:

1) have a huge array of function pointers for every function that could use said instructions

2) in main() check if the CPU supports the instructions, if yes: populate array with fast functions, if not, populate with backwards-compatible functions.

Naturally this comes with a performance hit at every call as at least one (or two, if you fill the arrays at compiletime, and in main just switch the array pointer) indirections. Is this really how stuff gets done?

If I take the main.cpp from http://www.strchr.com/media/crc32_popcnt.zip that he comparing and paste it into a new, default, VC2010 project. Then compile it as a Release build, then the mixed disassembly for the inner loop of POPCNT_HardwareSubbuN() looks like

I think it'd be great if you'd have this kind of information in your help section later on, for anxious people like me who are very wary of even having a recommendation engine at a news paper. I was actually on my way to sign up for a subscription after reading "A Renegade Trawler, Hunted for 10,000 Miles by Vigilantes" by Ian Urbina - but held back for the moment to give it more thought.

That said, I guess I could see a point in it maybe retaining users / subscribers if it's good enough. (I'd still appreciated it a lot more if this functionality could be turned off for users who request it though).

Wordpress is awful on DO and many things can and do break. Trust me, I've been developing with Wordpress for over a decade, and WP on a VPS is a whole different kettle of fish. Whether it's hardening the VPS to avoid a DDOS, or auto-patching Ubuntu when OpenSSL gets another vulnerability. It's quite mightmarish. DO is good for things like Gitlab and VPNs and things like that, but good luck trying to get something bulletproof and high availability. It's a devops nightmare. It can be achieved, but it takes some time...

Though ServerPilot focuses more on ongoing server management (e.g. updates, control panel, monitoring, support) for DigitalOcean servers rather than one-click installers, there is now a one-click WordPress installer.

I like Bitnami and I am a big fan. However, when deploying Jboss, Glassfish and Tomcat application servers from Bitnami onto AWS, I have found that you need to configure the application server specs based on the specs of your host EC2 -- I ended up creating custom images for each type of EC2 in my inventory for these application servers.

It seems a little question-begging that this was ruled on in terms of job competency. I think it clearer to make the point made in the article: the rights of a disabled worker to receive reasonable accommodation does not trump the right of other employees to a safe work environment.

In this case claiming that the ability to 'handle' stress is a core part of the required employment competency, seems to beg the question: why is that not something worthy of support and accommodation? What standards for stress coping can be put forward in advance? Does the employer ever advertise with this as a requirement? Do the judgements of the medical professionals about appropriate accommodation not carry enough weight?

Whereas if it was ruled on in terms of the risk and safe work environment, seems a slam dunk case.

The article suggested other cases had drawn that line, I wonder why this one went the more tendentious route.

This would be more of a story if the ruling went the other way. Someone threatens to kill people at work and loses his job, no shit. Imagine working with that person after you've had quite a specific and calculated death threat from that individual, completely impossible.

Some situations are just unfortunate, but that doesn't mean they're unjust.

As a person who does not always want or need to install another VCS tool (Bazaar) I have created a cloned copy on Github (I'm sure others have done so as well but they haven't posted here yet from what I could find). Enjoy! https://github.com/stevegood/filesync-server

Neat. I really liked Ubuntu One. However, if they seek to receive contributions I think GitHub would give them more exposure than launchpad, from what I can tell the history is not preserved (probably with good reasons) so the switch from bazaar would not have been painful.

So could this evolve into a better owncloud server? I don't think AGPL is a problem for the majority of owncloud usecases. It looks it's based on Python & Postgres - maybe it has better performance than owncloud?

This is exciting. Alternatives currently are things like Dropbox (proprietary and somewhat pricy) and TorrentSync (proprietary). I look forward to firing this thing up on my own server and have a private remote file storage. I do currently run a NAS but without a VPN connection home it's not as useful.

For 8192 elements I also get result that their search function is faster than STL. But 8192 elements is tiny size of array where to search, for larger array I get opposite - STL is faster. Here is output for 8 * 1024 * 1024 elements (~8.4million).

There is no mention of the fact that the STL implementation is very generic, it only assumes operator++ and operator* on the iteration, and operator< on the value.

The "optimized" versions here all make more assumptions on the iterator, starting from operator+(int) in Version 1, so it no longer works on iterators with just "forward_iterator_tag". Further versions even restrict vector sizes (albeit to a very high number) and assign -1 to an unsigned integer (size_t). So this is something you can use in your project if you need the performance, but can't put it into GCC.

If you take version 4, stop the first while loop once the size is at most 32, and then do linear search from there, it's faster (on my machine). For example, version 4 is 102ms and this tweak puts it at 83ms. (On clang x64.)

The most educational bit for me was the careful structuring and eventual elimination of the if/else to shake out a conditional move rather than an unpredictable branch.

Modern optimizers and CPU scheduling engines are so powerful, a lot of received wisdom on how to code for speed is outdated; manual loop unrolling, for example, is rarely very beneficial. It's nice to see that there's still some room for craftsmanship in the most critical of paths. Structuring loops for autovectorization is another useful habit to get into.

One of the problems with the extreme complexity of submitting code to GCC, and FSF projects in general, (having to complete copyright assignments, which are very slowly handled) is that this is unfortunately unlikely to end up in libstdc++ (although I would be happy to see it there).

For those of you looking to improve your by-hand visual communication skills, a cool old book is _Thinking with a Pencil_ . I picked up a copy a few months ago, and have been enjoying working through the exercises as I find time (which also includes isometric techniques):

All my notebooks are graph paper. I wanted to use them for composition but my teachers complained. I explained quite correctly that with graph paper you had lines for text and bonus you could draw diagrams as well. How cool was that?

Apparently not cool enough, and one English teacher insisted on "wide rule" composition notebooks, it made me ill to write in it.

One of these days I'll buy enough Eureka Lab notebooks in a single order to have them customize them beyond the simple lab/engineering moniker. :-)

As far as the triangular grid goes, it's not common, but is very useful when you need it.

Ternary diagrams are probably the main use for it. They're particularly common in the geosciences as many classification schemes and solid-solution phase diagrams are defined in terms of a mixture of three components.

I used it through most of undergrad to make ternary diagrams by hand (and had to remember and draw in various classification schemes off the top of my head).

It's hard to find, so I would guess that professors are still handing out badly photocopied versions of an ancient sheet of triangular graph paper. (Sure it would be easy to create a nice blank ternplot with grids in $plotting_package_of_choice, but what's the fun in that??)

I was a fan of analytic geometry back in high school. It illuminates so many mathematical and physical facts and propositions. It also enables you to take a brute force approach to solving seemingly impossible problems - just graph the thing and see where the curves intersect.

Then at some point I discovered computers and realized the true magnitude and capabilities of numerical methods.

I count 10 graph paper notebooks at arms length as I type this. I use the wonderful Japanese Maruman Mnemosyne notebooks and a fountain pen. People think I'm nuts, maybe I am but the combination brings me great joy.

Question: Does this include mostly startup / monetizable projects, or could it include new open source projects also? I've been trying to figure out when some of my projects are ready for wider promotion, and even how to promote an open source project (without feeling "spammy", and since it is open source [no income potential], taking out web ads isn't really appropriate).

This would be fantastic for the community. Obviously more startups/side projects are rejected from incubators/accelerators/hackathons/VCs than accepted...and none of them get feedback. It is very noble for a YC partner to use their time in this fashion to directly help the community.

Have you guys considered sharding out the feed into discrete "subreddit" type sections. That way posts would go to the db as "Show" instead of {post: "Show HN: somethong"}. I think thT would be a nice feature but understand why it might get resistance. Thanks.

I'm not sure I can define why I still use Wikipedia. The information is not dependable, and I never know when I'm reading nonsense. But I do use it at times.

If I need accurate information from an encylopedia, I now use Britannica.com (Encyopedia Britannica); it's informative, well-regarded, serious, and succinct. Coverage isn't as broad, of course. I'm not sure how the paywall works but a lot of content is free; I don't have a subscription and generally it's not a problem. Highly recommended.

While it seems there is little we can do to prevent the influence of money in our politics, truly democratic spaces like Wikipedia remain an important place for knowledge to be shared and verified. If we allow centralized sources of trust to become bought, sold, and politicized, then we risk fracturing into an Internet dark age, where your source of information is a function of your world view. What if instead of one Wikipedia, there was a pseudo version for people who strictly believe in creationism, or a version imposed on residents of Turkey that actively omits and reports to the government any complaints about the prime minister or references to the Armenian Genocide?

This probably happens quite a lot. Not every subject in Wikipedia will have a vigilant editor.

There was an article about ships owned by a major commodities trader dumping poison in the ocean, and they got their PR company to edit the article. I'm quite confident this is actually true because someone (inside) alerted me to the guy's name used to edit Wikipedia, and then showed me the PR company's people page.

Hard to see what can be done about this though. If someone is being paid, they have a lot more time to cleverly word their story. In some cases legitimately, in others not.

> We are committed to making participation in this project a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of level of experience, gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, personal appearance, body size, race, ethnicity, age, religion, or nationality.

It seems like you don't need a laundry list of things that are not ok to harass people about unless certain types of harassment are OK. For example "differences of opinion" is not on the list. Is it ok to harass someone who disagrees with me?. I doubt that's the intention, and that's probably covered by the rest of the covenant, but if that's the case why do they need to list out all the things it's not OK to harass people about? It just seems needlessly complicated and ripe for causing further drama.

This looks like a good move to me. The text of the CC only has one potential problem area that I see:

This code of conduct applies both within project spaces and in public spaces when an individual is representing the project or its community.

The potential problem here is what does it mean to be "representing the project or its community"?

For example, suppose on my personal website I include a link to my resume, and on that resume I list my work on the project. Suppose also on my personal website I have have a blog, and on that blog I post an article containing sexualized language or imagery.

Am I in violation of the CC?

The use of sexualized language or imagery is one of the specific examples given in the CC of a violation.

I would say that, based on current common usage of English, stating on a site unrelated to the project, as part of biographical information (such as a resume) that I contribute to the project would NOT be "representing the project or its community", and so would be outside the scope of the CC.

The Open Code of Conduct is just too long and specific. To me, it feels like an attempt to preemptively head off 'rules lawyer' casuistry by ensuring that everything that could be a cause for ejecting someone from a community is explicitly listed. In my experience, this just provides a much larger surface of attack -- and the OCoC seems to be suffering from exactly that now.

The Contributor Covenant's approach seems to be to make a clear statement of intent, and relying on the community to apply it correctly. It doesn't specifically ban, say, offering a backrub, but the necessary and appropriate response to someone saying "ha, but there's no rule against repeatedly offering a stranger backrubs, IS there?" isn't to draft a new rule, it's to show them the door.

I definitely prefer the wording of the Contributor Code of Conduct over the Open Code of Conduct. I don't really see the point though. Everything listed is just common sense, and there is still a catch-all clause open to interpretation.

There appears to be a lot of drama around both the Open Code of Conduct and the Contributor Convent. I'm not at all familiar with either--is there anyone who is who could share the disagreements going on around both documents?

It's like watching magic. Granted the effect is enhanced by the accelerated speed of the videos, but, wow. I wonder how long it takes to learn Illustrator/Sketch/etc well enough to be able to create art like this (e.g. watching the tire tread get put on the taxi - what voodoo was that?).

These are all beautiful illustrations, but they don't feel iconic to me. Granted, there is a spectrum when it comes to detail, but isn't the purpose of an icon to distill an idea to its visual essence?

What a clever title. I would even go as far as calling it icon rendering.

A good icon, just like a good logo, causes a small visual play in the back of one's mind. For that to happen, a lot of design time is spent in exploration, sketching perceptual cons, cross-pollenations and optimizations.

I respect Eli, but I'd hate to see this part of icon design survive, while genuine creativity vanes.

The "Socrates" of this article believes he's safer if his entire life is monitored rather than just part. So much wrong with this.

1 - What about no surveillance until there is a reasonable suspicion confirmed by an impartial Judge (see 4th Amendment to the Constitution for details)?

2 - Ok, he feels safer with Big Brother looking after him ... but apparently that justifies in his mind that everyone should be watched since he prefers it for himself. Is that narcissism or just sloppy thinking?

3 - One of the many dangers of this sort of surveillance is the bizarre notion that we are the data collected. There is NO level of surveillance that equates to the actual knowledge of the self (sorry Google, NSA, etc.). Think about it for yourself - is there any data set large enough that it would capture without misunderstanding who you are? Now remember that the rest of the 7 billion people on this planet have just as rich lives (inner and outer) as you.

On that last point, keep in mind the so called "targeted" ads that Google uses. Or the movie/book suggestions from sites that use them. Now imagine such bizarre misunderstandings leading our NSA big brothers to act. Not a pretty picture.

Larger and more haystacks aren't the solution. Realizing that humans aren't stacks of data is.

Does anyone else find it deeply suspicious that Wall Street (and investment bankers in general) remain mum about this? We're talking about a group which is one of the most powerful in the world, has tremendous influence over government, and has the most to lose by invasive NSA surveillance.

The worst part about this is that I've heard they wouldn't have been captured if they didn't get greedy and increase the size of their trades and continue to reuse the same trading accounts.

Allegedly they were hacking into news services and reading news before it was publicly released, which means their investing time frame was measured in hours and minutes.

This makes it much easier for the SEC to find this type of behavior as these types of trades, especially in the options markets stand out, when done at large sizes.

The SEC takes alot of grief, some well earned, but you should assume that when a stock moves, they'll run an automated scan of every trade that profited from that in the days/hours leading up to that move and over time they'll cross reference those trades to watch for accounts that continue to do this over time when they have reason to suspect illegal activity.

Think of it like athletes blood samples being held for years after competition. They won't test all the samples held but they have the data there to look back on if they find a reason to.

Perhaps I'm jumping ahead of the series here, but one of the unique (I think?) features of ARM is that all the various conditionals listed (NE, EQ, LT etc) can be applied to just about any instruction, and not just a branch. So, you could have an instruction sequence like:

SUBS R1,R2,R3 ADDEQ R4,R4,#1

whereas in other instruction sets you'd have to branch over the 'ADD' instruction if the previous comparison was non-zero.

(Not sure if this applies to ARM thumb style instructions or not; my ARM experience is very out of date!)

One thing I remember when RiscOS was still a bit of a thing was that a lot of its users praised ARM assembly. That, plus the short burst of 68k ASM when the Palm Pilot came out, was probably the last "big" hobbyist surge of assembly that I can think of right now.

Regarding the Gallo word "ennuyail", which the writer describes as being often translated as "boredom", I'm surprised he doesn't reach for the French cognate "ennuis", which is often translated as "troubles". Indeed, the word "troubles" seems to fit Virginie Desgranges' situation very well, and is probably what she had in mind when she used that term in her native Gallo.

Some of his ideas are great (particularly trying to take on gerrymandering), but I think on the money issue he's nearsighted.

> He launched Mayday PAC to much fanfare in the spring of 2014, billing it as the "super PAC to end super PACs." But it failed to play a decisive role in any race that year.

As Lessig found out, money by itself cannot buy power. Money is a means for magnifying the impact of forces that are already in play.

Consider, for example, climate change. During the last debate of the last Presidential election, Barak Obama was falling over himself to be more pro-coal than Mitt Romney. Was it because he hoped to court the coal-industry lobbyists and turn their firehose of political spending in his direction? There wasn't a chance in hell of that happening, and he knew it. He did it to court the voters in central and southern Illinois whose livelihoods are dependent on the coal industry there. We're a sprawling suburban nation addicted to cheap gasoline. Energy companies would have tremendous power even if they didn't spend a penny lobbying.

The same is true for banking and finance. People complain about fancy financial instruments, but at the end of the day main street businesses are utterly dependent on payroll loans, consumers are dependent on credit cards, and everyone wants to get a fat adjustable-rate mortgage so they can buy a big suburban house. Do you think banks need to spend any money lobbying to sway politicians in their favor?

And I'll also go out on a limb and suggest that money being a factor in politics isn't as bad as it seems. At least when money can influence politics, the noveau-riche can upset the old guard. Consider the auto industry. Traditional carmakers don't need to spend money to buy political power--the fact that they employ hundreds of thousands of middle-class workers guarantees that. But as traditional cars decline, and the Teslas and Googles of the world remake the industry, it's probably a good thing that those companies can use money to overcome the inertia and political mindshare of existing car companies.

"Lessig said he would serve as president only as long as it takes to pass a package of government reforms"

Well that will take longer than two terms. Congress doesn't even play along with the people who are incahoots in rigging the system. It's beyond ridiculous to believe they will play along with their own destruction.

I will be surprised if he doesn't reach his $1M goal, and much more surprised if anything substantive comes of the effort.

The "launch and resign" plan smells bad -- it seems like a hack to avoid having a complete platform, implying that the government will lack a leader during that interval, and using that as motivation to pass the act seems like a bad idea. It also raises the question of who the real VP would be.

Hm, hopefully he won't act as a spoiler for Bernie. A Sanders-Lessig ticket would look pretty good if Bernie can't get Warren. Bit early in the game for that chatter, though.

Lessig still isn't a household name, so I think it's far too late for him to participate in this election cycle as a real candidate. That being said, he's also imperfect as a candidate for a few reasons. Lessig is really good at presentations and speaking eloquently, but he still doesn't quite rile people up in the way that is needed for his kind of insurgent campaign (against who, exactly?). Lessig also doesn't have the cash to get noticed nationwide. He's setting goals to raise a million, whereas Hillary is planning a billion dollar campaign, and the Republicans are likely planning a several billion dollar campaign for whoever they pick.

Also, an elephant in the room: the issues Lessig is running on (campaign finance reform, voting reform, ending gerrymandering) are not actually non-partisan in the way that he is trying to market them. Everyone (everyone!) knows that campaign finance reform, gerrymandering, and voter reform are the left's issues.

Why? Because the right in the USA needs voter exclusion and balkanization(via the false issue of voter fraud aimed at poor populations) in order to win elections. Campaign finance reform is similar; big money influences both sides heavily, but they favor the right for their business-friendly disposition. Big money favoring the right wing means that prospective candidates from the left are also vetted against how business friendly they are, pulling the mainstream left wing toward the right wing, assuming that candidates act rationally and take the money for grabs.

This series of behaviors ultimately results in the far-right wing business cartel promoters that currently comprise Congress. Claiming that Lessig isn't some kind of far-left (for the US) candidate is a tad disingenuous, even if he actually believes it. A popular and well-moneyed Lessig would be a huge threat to big money's influence on politics, to be sure-- in the way that Sanders is currently.

> "We have this fantasy politics right now where people are talking about all the wonderful things theyre going to do while we know these things cant happen inside the rigged system.

Followed by:

> Lessig said he would serve as president only as long as it takes to pass a package of government reforms and then resign the office and turn the reins over to his vice president. He said he would pick a vice president "who is really, clearly, strongly identified with the ideals of the Democratic Party right now,"

So, wait. You don't want the "System", yet your Vice President is basically a member of the Democratic Party which is part of the precisely bi-party, rigged System right now ?

Makes a lot of sense if you want to perpetuate the said rigged System.

It would be nice if the article articulated his ideas for change, other than just overturning the Citizens United decision. For decades the public who haven't been lulled to sleep have clamored for Campaign Finance Reform, increased Limits On Lobbyist, and Transparency.

What did we get. Citizens United, lobbyists writing 10,000 page laws riddled with loopholes, and Bills and Administrations which do the exact opposite of what they say.

"I will be leader just long enough to institute the necessary reforms" has led to lifelong dictatorships in other countries. Lessig doesn't seem the dictator type, but that particular promise should scare students of history.

Most people don't care enough to care about or understand how important campaign finance is, so it's unlikely he'd even win the nomination, but hopefully he can get enough support to at least get into the debate and bring the issue to a wider audience.

I'm having trouble imagining any outcome other than drawing votes away from Sanders. Even if he were to win the primary and the general election, congress is very unlikely to budge.

> "Even if she did say exactly the right things, I dont think its credible that she could achieve it because she and the same thing with Bernie would be coming to office with a mandate thats divided among five or six different issues," Lessig said. "The plausibility of creating the kind of mandate necessary to take on the most powerful forces inside of Washington is zero. This is what led me to recognize that we have to find a different way of doing this.

I don't agree with this logic, that "policital capitol" is split among multiple mandates, and that having more mandates makes you less likely to achieve any of them. Having a position on many issues just means that more voters have a reason to vote for (or against) you. Many of those positions are expected of someone running for office under a certain party, and not stating a clear policy preference doesn't usually win you votes from the other party, it loses you votes from your own party.

I think Lessig's efforts are better spent continuing to advocate for an article V convention and influencing congressional elections via the Mayday PAC.

What't the advantage of Lessig's win-reform-resign approach rather than convincing a more electable candidate to commit to the same reform? If there is enough public support for Lessig to win the election, presumably there would be enough support for another candidate with more outside support (such as his designated successor) to win with the same platform.

The main reason I can see is that Lessig himself views his promise of reform to be more reliable than any another candidate's promise. True or not, I think it would be difficult to convince the general electorate that he should be trusted more than any other candidate.

It's a interesting idea, but hopelessly doomed. A viable candidate needs to articulate on many issues, as The President doesn't have the luxury of only focusing on a single issue. There's a whole cabinet full of people who run departments that he needs to have potential policies to put in place.

As a potential spoiler candidate, it might work by forcing more attention to campaign financing reform, but it's hard to take him seriously beyond that.

This is interesting, but I have a hard time seeing how being a transparent office holder (through voter referendums) would work for the office of POTUS. I can see it working well as a legislator and would prefer a system where one of the houses of Congress is direct referendum.

I think it would be far more interesting to completely "vacate" the office and do nothing, without formally resigning. The point being that elected officials have far less power than people think. I think the executive would function largely the same without a president or vice.

The problem isn't money in politics, the problem is government. Nearly all taxes that don't fund a very limited set of government functions should be completely eliminated.

Your tax money is what gives politicians power. Leftists want more government, more taxes, and centralization of power into the hands of even fewer politicians and yet are puzzled - dumbfounded even - why things are "working". Bernie Sanders is a Hugo Chavez, a fool.

Nothing against Lessig, but he has about as much chance of becoming President as I do, and I'm not even forming an exploratory committee.

The American electorate has been conditioned to vote for Team Red or Team Blue, and within those increasingly-similar teams their preferred standard-bearers will be chosen by a consensus of large donors in a series of luncheons and closed-door meetings, primaries be damned. It's not so much a sinister New World Order conspiracy as it is a general desire by the elite to influence future governance to secure their wealth.

If this weren't the case, then Sanders' standing wouldn't be so noteworthy, and O'Malley wouldn't be concerned about his party's nebulous debate schedule. Likewise, we wouldn't be hearing as much about Jeb Bush.

I'm not saying that third-party disruption can't take place, but the time to be forming exploratory committees was months and months ago, if not years. The 2016 Presidential race is well underway, and Lessig hasn't even stepped up to the starting line.